The year 2022 remained tough for the crypto market for a number of reasons that led to several losses as well. However, there remains a silver lining here with the number of developers within the industry witnessing a rise. Crypto space is in its growing phase and developers play a crucial role in creating new projects and ensuring their proper operations.
Electric Capital, a venture capital firm focused on crypto, noted in its recent report that out of overall developers in the crypto space, the majority of them are on the Ethereum network. While in terms of monthly active developers, other networks than the smart contract blockchain have the lead.
The global cryptocurrency market plunged last year by major crypto assets losing up to almost 70% of their value. However, the developers within the industry rose by 5% in comparison to the previous year. This shows that despite the crypto market tanking, decentralized applications and other crypto projects are continuously created and widely adopted.
The number of first-time developers hit an all-time high after 61,000 developers joined the space. The report also highlighted that currently within the industry, there are 23,000 monthly active developers.
For a variety of reasons including interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserves intending to tighten the monetary policy, several significant bankruptcies, etc. led the crypto winter to affect the industry.
The front-end and back-end of a proposed blockchain network are the main areas of attention for core blockchain developers because they are the parts that other developers will build on top of. Even after a blockchain is created, developers continue to create new functions and technology to improvise or trigger upgrades for improved functionality.
According to the VC firm, developer engagement is an “early and leading sign of value development.” It went on to say that “developers create killer programs that provide value to end users, which pulls more consumers, who in turn lure more developers.”
Compared to the previous crypto winter of 2018, when bitcoin fell 65%, Electric Capital observed that developer activity in 2022 was significantly busier.
For Bitcoin, there has been a nearly 300% increase in monthly active developers since 2018. In that time, the number of Ethereum developers quintupled, going from 1,084 to 5,819 in total.
Ethereum experienced substantial growth during the last year following the Merge, and its share of new developers currently stands at 16%. However, the number of developers working on the Solana, NEAR, and Polygon protocols increased by more than 500 each month, a 40% year-over-year increase.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/01/19/ethereum-has-the-most-developers-other-networks-have-more-monthly-active-ones/